An Internet Access to S.E.C. Filings to End Oct. 1

Published: August 12, 1995

WASHINGTON, Aug. 11—
A service that offered free Internet access to Securities and Exchange Commission filings will discontinue it on Oct. 1, executives of the service said today.

The service, the nonprofit Internet Multicasting Service of Washington, has been distributing corporate records filed with commission -- from quarterly earnings reports to shareholder proxy statements -- since January 1994. The service also distributes documents filed with the Patent and Trademark Office.

Carl Malamud, president of Internet Multicasting, said he wanted the Federal Government to take over the service. He said that the Paperwork Reduction Act, which takes effect on Oct. 1, required the S.E.C. and Patent Office to start a similar distribution project on the Internet.

The law says agencies with public records stored electronically have to provide "timely and equitable access" in an "efficient, effective and economical manner."

"The law is real clear they've got to do it," Mr. Malamud said.

But a spokesman for the commission, John Heine, said it was "too early to tell" whether it would take over Internet distribution of the Edgar documents. Mr. Malamud is asking "some of the same questions we've been asking ourselves," Mr. Heine said.

Internet Multicasting Service, a research group exploring new technology on the Internet, said it had sent out 3.1 million S.E.C. filings to individuals and Wall Street firms since the project's inception. That is an average of 16,700 documents a day. An additional 1.59 million patent documents were distributed during the same period.

Grant money supporting the project from the National Science Foundation is about to run out. Mr. Malamud also received support from R. R. Donnelley & Sons Inc. of Chicago and New York University.

"We've done two years of public service, thank you," Mr. Malamud said, adding that he had personally financed a portion of the project.

While companies like Mead Data Central and Disclosure Inc. resell S.E.C. records the same day they are filed, such services are much more expensive than examining the raw information on a computer. The data from Internet Mutlicasting are available a day later on the Internet through the commission's electronic data base, Edgar, for the Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval System.